RADICAL ANTIQUITY: Free Love Zoroastrians, Farming Pirates, and Ancient Uprisings, always good to learn our ancestors had problems with authoritarians too

RADICAL ANTIQUITY: Free Love Zoroastrians, Farming Pirates, and Ancient Uprisings
CHRISTOPHER B. ZEICHMANN
Pluto Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$20.95 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A groundbreaking history of radically democratic societies in antiquity

When you think of Ancient Greece and Rome, what do you imagine? The Acropolis and the Colosseum? Perhaps the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, and the rule of the Caesars? This well-trodden history of great thinkers, military leaders, and early state formation in the classical world enthralls us still, but it tells only half the story…

Radical Antiquity takes you on a journey in search of anarchy, statelessness, and social experimentation in the Graeco-Roman world. Sweeping across the Mediterranean from the time of the first Olympic Games until the emergence of Islam, Christopher B. Zeichmann tells the stories of escaped slaves, pirates, and religious sects—all of whom sought a more egalitarian way of life. This history from below brings the experiences of common and marginal people out of obscurity and radically expands our understanding of social and political life in the classical world.

“Unearthing the ancient world’s anarchist cultures, Zeichmann presents a compelling argument that authority may itself have always been the real aberration. Highly recommended” - Alan Moore, writer, activist, performer

“An inspirational masterpiece … Will transform the way you think about history, and the possibilities for human liberty”—William Arnal, Professor, University of Regina

“Wonderfully informative and a pleasure to read” - Uri Gordon, editor, Freedom

Christoper B. Zeichmann is a professor of history and religious studies at Toronto Metropolitan University. He is the author of The Roman Army and the New Testament and Queer Readings of the Centurion at Capernaum.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: A book by an academic and a leftist and an historian that does not require a twelve-cylinder brain concentration-turbocharged to 1000 horsepower to comprehend.

Honest.

It's examining the records we have from an interpretive point of view that does not assume all meaning is on the surface, or even near it; we know, as internet-savvy information consumers, the "just the facts" approaches used in days of yore made the immense leap of faith that the ancient writers cared about or could reliably discern only "facts" from such data as they received on a given subject. We know better than to accept one version of events as the only truth. It's something that this book contends with, that recovery of more complete data by accounting for bias in recording and further distorting bias in later preservation of the information about ancient peoples.

As this exercise of judgment and evaluation is literally the author's day job, I'm inclined to believe he is doing it in as much honest and fair evaluation of what's there as is possible. In other words I feel satisfied he is not just making shit up as he goes along.

It is very enjoyable to have data that suggests we-the-people have always been ready to ignore, co-opt, or simply pretend to obey our governing class when it has suite our needs. This lesson is very useful at any time; it is, however, particularly timely now.

Partake of Author Zeichmann's amusing prose detailing supremely timely reminders that the consent of the governed can always be revoked.

PRIVATE WORLDS: Growing Up Gay in Post-War Britain, elegy for a life spent without

PRIVATE WORLDS: Growing Up Gay in Post-War Britain
JEREMY SEABROOK
Pluto Press
$19.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In 1950s suburban England, a friendship bloomed between Jeremy Seabrook and Michael O’Neill—two gay men coming of age at a time when homosexuality was still a crime. Their relationship was inflected by secrecy and fear; the shadows that had distorted their adolescent years were never wholly dispelled, long into their adult life. Lyrical, candid and poignant, this is a tale of sexual identity, working-class history and family drama. A memoir of unparalleled authenticity, Private Worlds is an elegy for a doomed friendship.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: The US class system impacted me far less than the UK version did young Seabrook, thank all the nonexistent gods. The possession or absence of a "posh" accent is greatly deterministic of one's future; the comparable thing here is the Southern twang, which (no matter where the business is centered) will keep one in the lower ranks. I, being gay and really unwilling to pretend otherwise, felt the sting of exclusion, so that reality was shared by the author and me. His eventual success has been built on being a self not supported by the world he came from; escape by jettisoning the weight of his class identity. Seabrook and O'Neill each accomplished this by being bolshie leftists in an England that was convulsing from the wounds of Empire, birthing today's hideous US-style fascist plutocratic class system.

That doomed, deep love, found and lost early, was part of my life as well. The friendship blighted by the need to dissemble; the deeper connection denied by the caustic effects of powerlessness, of the absence of role models for doing the open and honest thing by each other, was all too painfully relatable to me. It's shocking to me, looking back, that my life was not more blighted by this distorting pressure to be someone I was not and, moreover, did not ever want to be...his life, from my outsider point of view, was more so than mine.

That story is not mine to tell. Author Seabrook and O'Neill have a longstanding public connection, and have each analyzed the way their milieu had them jointly "fail{ing} to grow up together"...a phrase, and an idea behind it, I'd like to pay honor to by saying I wish to hell I'd said that first. The class system's role in this failure was, probably because I'm from the US, not as real as was the way the precocious thwarted-single-mother-raised boy was forced to dissemble. His friendship with O'Neill, ostensibly the focus of this book, feels more like a well-polished lens for him to examine himself and his failed world-beating dreams.

Seabrook and O'Neill (born and raised a Londoner, a key component of his identity as an outsider in the English North) affected a caustic ironical distance from their neighbors. An intellectual pose of studying these Others, who in their turn Othered these bumptious boys for being queer, froze into an outsider identity, an observer stance, that would enable them to "overcome" their background only by treating it as fodder, material for their real life's work in sociological study. Dealing with this really unappealing trait now, Author Seabrook seems paralyzed by his recognition of its cruelty. That this is cruelty returned for cruelty given is not, to my surprise, part of his path to self-forgviness. The ironic separation has an inevitable distancing effect between the friends...how could it not...and that gets his focus. I was surprised by how bitterly he seems to regret the dark space left by O'Neill's separate personhood, and how little kindness he seems to extend to that early Seabrook boy. Judging one's earlier self is easy. Forgiving them is, apparently, not.

A fascinating dive into an intelligent man's past love for his intellectual equal and emotional opposite. I'm sure anyone who's read and liked Édouard Louis or Jon Fosse as tellers of personal and immutable truth will batten on this book.